Definitely Dylan is Growing - Some News and Some Changes

Dear friends,

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll soon be launching the first season of the Definitely Dylan podcast! I’ve always been asked why DD isn’t a podcast, and the reason was simple: I wanted to be able to play songs in their entirety (impossible on a podcast due to issues with copyright law).

So why a podcast now? Over the course of the last 13 months, I’ve created 40 episodes of Definitely Dylan. That’s 40 hours of great music and original commentary, all written and produced by yours truly. I’m immensely proud of my work, but the main limitation of this format has always been the weekly deadline. The kind of show I want to make for my audience is entertaining, informative, and ambitious - and that takes work. The pressures of the weekly deadline and live-on-air recording have often left me frustrated when it felt like my work was cut short and I couldn’t fully do the topic justice.

So what will the podcast be like? Definitely Dylan has always aspired to fresh and original explorations of Dylan’s work, and the podcast will take this to the next level, allowing me to finally bring my listeners the show I’ve always wanted to make.

So what happens to the radio show on Resonance FM? The radio show is not going anywhere! I will continue to be on your airwaves every Sunday at 4PM GMT, nerding out about all things Dylan and playing rare tracks. Expect a little less structure and a little more spontaneity, with frequent guests.

Two Definitely Dylan shows then? Yes. But to avoid confusion, we’ll call the radio show Definitely Dylan Live, as opposed to the Definitely Dylan podcast. Both will eventually be featured on the website definitelydylan.com (the podcast will also be available in all the usual places).

When is all this happening? While the release date for the podcast is still a few weeks away (watch this space!), the radio show will be switching formats this Sunday, 17 February 2019.

You will be able to find all the Live radio shows in the Listen section of this website!

I’m very excited about these changes, and about what the future holds for Definitely Dylan. I can’t wait to share what I’ve been working on!

Thanks for your support,

Laura Tenschert

Episode 40: Dylan and the North Country

“If you’re travelling in the North Country fair where the winds hit heavy on the borderline”… this week we’re exploring how Dylan’s roots in the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota have influenced his art over the years.

I thought you might want to check out in full some of the things I quoted in this episode, so here are some links for you. Here’s a link to “My Life in a Stolen Moment”, the poem which starts with a passage about Hibbing, MN. The 2017 interview with Bill Flanagan that I quoted from can be found here.

Dylan also mentions Hibbing in the liner notes to The Times They Are A-Changin’, which is the album that contains North Country Blues. You can read “11 Outlined Epitaphs” here.

I didn’t have time to tell you about an interesting comment that Dylan made onstage in San Francisco in 1980, during the so-called Musical Retrospective Tour. Before playing a cover of the song Fever, Dylan told the crowd:
“Anyway, I ran into a girl here on the street a while back and she said I was a strange person and she told me why. She said, she said, ‘You were born up in a certain area where the ground is metallic’. And actually she's right. Where I come from the ground is metallic. And-a as a matter of fact during the Second World War, ninety per cent of all the iron and steel that went into all the ships and the boats and the airplanes and all kinds of weaponry […] came from the area where I always lived. […] One of the great lakes is called Lake Superior, I don't know if you've ever heard of it. Across the lake is a town called Detroit. And I got to happen to go to Detroit once I think when I was about twelve or so, with a friend of mine who had relatives there. Anyway, when — I can't remember how it happened but I found — I found myself in a bingo parlor. There were people coming to eat all day and they play bingo all night, and there was a dance band in the back. And that was the first time — see where I'm from, I would only hear mostly country music, you know, Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Hank Penny, all kinda Hanks! But anyway so this was my first time face-to-face with rhythm & blues, it was in Detroit. And when I was about twelve years old, and the man there was singing this song here. I don't think I'll do it as good as he did it, but I'm gonna try to do it anyway”

I think it’s interesting that Dylan is tying his experience of both country music and rhythm and blues to the place where he first experienced them. If you’re interested in hearing Dylan tell this story, and hearing him sing an absolutely breathtakingly sultry version of Fever, you can listen to it here. Dylan had articulated this idea that the metallic ground had an effect on the people who grow up or live in the Iron Range, and he talks about it in the Playboy Interview that I quoted (although I got my years mixed up, this quote comes from the 1978 Playboy interview - I mistakenly attributed it to 1966 in the episode). You can read the whole interview here.

There’s also a direct musical connection to Minnesota, because Dylan chose to re-record half of his seminal record Blood On The Tracks there (he’s also rumoured to have written the bulk of the songs over the course of a summer spent in MN). If you want to find out more about that, check out the three episodes on More Blood, More Tracks and Blood On The Tracks in the archive! If I would have had time to play a song from the Minnesota sessions, I would have played If You See Her Say Hello, because that song feels like a sister song to Girl From The North Country.

Playlist:

1. Something There Is About You

2. Girl From The North Country (Live, 17 Ma7 1964, Royal Festival Hall, London)

3. North Country Blues (Live, 26 October, 1963, Carnegie Hall, New York City)

4. Tell Ol’ Bill (North Country Blues OST)

5. Ring Of Fire (Feeling Minnesota OST)

Episode 39: Bob Dylan and The Beatles Part II

This week we continue the exploration of the relationship between Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Part II focuses on the individual members and their careers after the group’s split in 1970.

What do you think, is that George Harrison singing on Time Passes Slowly? I’m sure it is!

Below you’ll find some links to songs I couldn’t play in the episode, but that I think are very interesting and worth hearing.

Here’s a link to the third (and only unreleased) song that Harrison and Dylan co-wrote. This is the song Nowhere To Go that features the line “I get tired of being Beatle Jeff”.

If you’d like to listen to I Don’t Want To Do It in full, you can check it out here.

You can listen to the (short) clip of Dylan covering Here Comes The Sun live in 1981 here.

You definitely have to check out the BEAUTIFUL recording of Bob Dylan singing Something as a tribute to George Harrison on 13/11/2002 at Madison Square Garden in NYC. He prefaced it with the words:

Thank you. There's a tribute coming, I guess it's the next week or the week after, it's over in England, for George Harrison and <inaudible> lots of people <inaudible> I'm not sure who. But we can't make it. I just want to do this song <inaudible> for George because we were such good buddies.

There’s even a video of the performance, which you can watch here!

In case you want to hear John Lennon’s response to Bob Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody in full, you can do that here.

By the way, I was running out of time, so I couldn’t go much further into the complex relationship between John Lennon and Bob Dylan, but this article entitled “Bob Dylan and John Lennon's Weird, One-Sided Relationship” from the Atlantic in 2012 (when Tempest was released) is a very interesting read.

Playlist:

1. I’d Have You Anytime - George Harrison

2. Time Passes Slowly (early version) - Bob Dylan feat. George Harrison

3. Just Like A Woman (Concert for Bangladesh)

4. I Don’t Want To Do It (snippet) - George Harrison

5. Heart of Mine (Shot of Love)

6. God - John Lennon

7. Gotta Serve Somebody (Slow Train Coming, snippet)

8. Serve Yourself (snippet) - (John Lennon)

9. Roll On John (Tempest)

EDIT: Let me add two things that I’ve found since recording this episode. If you’re like me, you’re already loving the friendship between Bob Dylan and George Harrison, so you might enjoy watching this clip of them performing Peggy Sue together in the 80s. They seem quite drunk and like they’re having a lot of fun. I’ve also come across this funny video of Michael Douglas talking about meeting Harrison and Dylan (with his dog).

Episode 38: A Tribute to Clydie King

Definitely Dylan is back with its first episode in 2019. This week, the hour is dedicated to the memory of Clydie King, the woman who Bob Dylan has called his “ultimate singing partner”.

Ms. King passed away on the 7th of January, 2019 at age 75, and left behind an impressive body of work which began when she was just 13 years old in 1956 and included numerous releases under her own name as well as session work for a veritable “who’s-who” of popular music acts of the 60s and 70s.

After joining Dylan’s band in 1980 during the so-called “gospel years”, Ms. King soon took on a more prominent collaborative role and helped define Dylan’s early 80s sound with her velveteen harmonies and her intuitive understanding of Dylan’s approach to phrasing and melody. 

This hour features some of Ms. King’s many duets with Dylan, as well as recordings from her earlier career, both as solo artist and session singer. Join Laura as she celebrates the life and work of Clydie King.

A small correction - on the song Mary From The Wild Moor, Dylan was accompanied by Regina McCrary, not Clydie King (sorry, the bootleg version I have isn’t the best sound quality).

Edit: I’ve decided to add a few songs by or featuring Ms. King that I really like, in case you’d like to check them out:

Here are the three videos of her singing Let’s Begin with Bob Dylan: 1, 2, 3.
And if you still haven’t seen the video of her singing Abraham, Martin & John that I talk about in the episode, here you go, you’re welcome!
Also, here’s a great different version of the two singing this song, and here’s a great alternative version of Rise Again, with Dylan on piano!

Our Romance - Clydie King (1958)
Who Do You Love - Clydie King & Mel Carter (1962)
The Thrill Is Gone - Clydie King (1965) - this is a cool video, too.
One Of Those Good For Crying Over You Days - Clydie King (1967)
Kidnapped - The Blackberries (1970?) - this is an incredibly catchy song that was recorded for Motown
Mockingbird - Barry Goldberg & Clydie King (1972) (the sound quality here isn’t great, but it’s a cool song)
The Long Goodbye - Clydie King (1973) - this is Ms. King singing the title song to Robert Altman’s film The Long Goodbye in a decidedly more jazzy style than we normally hear her. Do I hear her channelling Billie Holiday?
You’re No Good - Linda Ronstadt (1974?) - This video from the Midnight Special is 100% more fun to watch because of Clydie King!

Playlist:

1. Let’s Begin - Bob Dylan and Clydie King (Trouble No More)

2. By Now - Clydie King & The Sweet Things

3. Sweet Memories - Ray Charles feat. Clydie King

4. Abraham, Martin & John - Bob Dylan & Clydie King

5. All Along The Watchtower - The Brothers and Sisters

6. Let It Be Me - Bob Dylan & Clydie King

7. Woman - Clydie King

8. Rise Again - Bob Dylan & Clydie King

Episode 37: Bob Dylan and the Beatles in the 1960s

The other week I received a message asking me if I’d consider doing an episode about Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Ringo Starr had just been to see Dylan live in concert at the Beacon Theatre in NYC, and as I was thinking about it, the idea for this episode took shape pretty rapidly.

Fun fact: long before I was a Bob Dylan fan, I was a nine year old Beatles geek who wouldn’t shut up about her favourite musicians. Some things don’t change…

So in this hour, we examine the different roles the Beatles and Bob Dylan played in popular culture at the beginning of the 60s, and we’ll discuss the fateful meeting at a hotel in New York, where Dylan introduced the Beatles to cannabis, and singlehandedly changed the trajectory of music. Or did he?

The music in this hour reflects some of the ways in which these seminal artists influenced one another and served as artistic foils throughout their respective careers.

Please note that I’ve decided to narrow this episode down to just the decade of the 1960s. There is a lot more to be said about Dylan’s friendship and rivalry with the individual members after the band broke up. I’m saving that for another episode, so there will be a Part 2!

The clips that I played in the episode of Starr and McCartney talking about their meeting with Bob Dylan come from the Beatles Anthology documentary. Here’s a longer clip where all four are talking about their relationship with Bob Dylan.

Here’s the beautiful George Harrison cover of Dylan’s Mama You Been On My Mind.

Here’s the Beatles jamming to Rainy Day Women No 12&35 - what a perfect song to cover by the artist that introduced the to marijuana.

Also, here’s a cool version of Bob Dylan playing the Beatles song Come Together at a 1985 rehearsal!

Playlist:

1. Corrina Corrina - Bob Dylan

2. My Back Pages - Bob Dylan

3. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away - The Beatles

4. Norwegian Wood - The Beatles

5. Fourth Time Around - Bob Dylan

6. I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine - Bob Dylan

7. Yer Blues - The Beatles

8. Things We Said Today - Bob Dylan (Beatles cover)

Full disclaimer: the image I used for this episode seems to be photoshopped. I just really wanted it to be real, so I might keep it up there anyway, but just so you know, it’s not an actual photo of Dylan and Lennon together!